Transcript:
Hi, my gardening! Angels and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, I am Jess. And today we’re going to be talking about what to do with etoileated or stretched out succulents. Hi, come here. Come here! Come here, come here. Yeah, hi. Can you say hi? No, he’s just a good girl, aren’t you? Oh, thanks, excuse you, all right, so like I was saying, um, we’re going to be talking about what to do. If your succulents get taller and stretched out, um, or retoliated is kind of the word for that. So I wanted to show you what this looks like. Um, in comparison to succulents that are not stretched out. And so you can kind of start to look for it. And this is really most applicable to kind of the rosette type like succulents, such as echeveria or grape to patellum, there’s some other varieties that this kind of applies to, but for the most part, it’s these, um, sedums, usually they can have this problem, but I’ve noticed that they usually react a little bit better and don’t stretch as easily, whereas echeverias and grapto-patellums do stretch for light pretty quickly, so I’m going to show you some of the examples that I have of both atoliated and normal-looking succulents, and then what I’m going to do with mine to kind of fix them so to kind of spot the difference first off. These are my echeveria. Lolas They’re a really beautiful, succulent, and you can kind of see here that they have quite a bit of space in between the leaves. Now compare this dog hair in my mouth. Compare this to this grapto-patellum superbum or superbum is what I normally call it. You can see that it’s much shorter and kind of short and fat is what I like to call them. Um, but they’re really compacted together, and there’s not that height or separation between the leaves. They all just lay right on top of one another same thing here with the Echeveria laowi. You can see that the leaves are pretty compacted together, and then this one is an echeveria polydonus and you can see that they are also, um, close together like that. And so those are what succulents should look like in the echeveria species. Now, all of my echeveria. Lola’s were in the same spot and so they all unfortunately, um, fell to the same fate of becoming intolerated, so it’s not really a problem that they gotta tolerated, though, because it just kind of gives us an excuse to propagate them. So I’m okay with it. Um, and you know, it makes it a little bit easier to take some cuttings when you know, your succulents are kind of needing it. So with the atolated succulents, one of the first things that I would suggest doing. If you’re going to plan on fixing, it is making the light source a little bit stronger. So if they’re under your grow, lights, move the girl light closer, leave it on for longer, whatever you need to do to increase that amount of sunlight, move it closer to the windowsill, Really what it’s doing when it starts stretching like this and getting tall is that it’s looking for a light source so or it’s wanting more light, but I would suggest doing that first. These ones are all really healthy, and they just kind of stretched in their main section, but a lot of times they’ll get thinner at the top, and if they if I really let them go and stretch, then you won’t really have a nice rosette on the top and one thing that I want to point out with. These is that they all have a pretty compacted rosette right on the top here. So if you fix the light source a lot of times, they’ll continue to grow and that top will be the compacted succulent that you want, and then that’s kind of what you’re going to be looking for. So if this was completely stretched out the entire way, you can still do it, but your success is going to be much higher if you have an already compacted, um, top. I guess secondly, I watered these a few days ago. And so you’ll want to make sure that you water your succulents. Um, before, you know, cutting them off, because that’s what we’re going to be doing is taking cuttings of these. And so you just want to make sure that you water your succulents, at least two or three days before you’re actually going to take the cutting. Um, and then you know if you can kind of wiggle the leaf or pinch them, and if they’re they give or they’re, you know, wiggly, then that would be an indication that you need to be watering it before you take the cutting because really in order to get the most successful cutting. Um, you want to have a freshly watered plant And then the other thing I wanted to mention is that your succulent will not go back down. So all of these succulents were probably about the height. Same height. As this Lola. They will never go back to being compacted from their current state right now, and so really the only way to do that is to fix the light source and then have the new growth be that compacted growth. So I have a lot of Lola’s that have this problem, so we’re going to be fixing a lot of plants today. So like I said, the one great thing is that it makes it really easy to do this, so you can take either a sharp clean knife or I use sewing scissors. I find that they work a little bit easier for me, and then what you’re going to be doing is just trying to find one of these separations where you can get to the stem and making a cut. I like to go about half an inch below where I’m going to be considering the rosette, which I’m probably going to start about right here where my finger is and so what I’ll do with this One is remove the leaves and you can keep the leaves and leaf propagate them. That’s fine, but what I’m going to be doing with These ones is removing these and then about half an inch down. This is where I’m going to be cutting it. So then we are left with this nice rosette and you can see the leaves are pretty compacted, and then we have this blunt end, and then what I’m going to do with this is I’m just going to leave it. Honestly, on my desk for about a week and really let this end Callus up just as you would a normal cutting and then I’m going to plant it in, you know, either pumice or succulent soil of some sort or a variety mix of those, and just, you know, treat it as I would a normal, succulent, so it’s going to go back on my grow shelf. I’m under the light in its new soil medium and it will eventually grow roots. You honestly don’t have to water these very often. I usually wait about a month before I even water them. Because if you water it and there’s no roots, they’re not going to have any way of absorbing the water anyway, so even though it’s calloused, so it won’t rot. It’s fine, so if you do water it, it’ll be okay, but I honestly just wait about a month so that I have roots to water anyhow. Otherwise, it’s not really worth your time, so then with this bottom here, you can see where we cut it and I’m just going to leave. This be completely, There’s another little one here that I’m going to take a cutting off because it also got stretched out, but honestly, I’m just going to leave this bottom as is. I’m going to put it back on the gross shelf and what this will do is it will grow little babies off the side here, and that’s how we’re going to really multiply and honestly, you know, that’s how I got all of these is. I took a few of them and started taking cuttings and that’s how we got to where we’re at currently. So, um, I’m pretty sure. All of these were cuttings at some point, so just leave these be and they will grow into their own and lets. Go and chop the rest of them so foreign. All right, so I cut off as many as I could. Uh, we have beautiful rosettes from this, and these are going to propagate beautifully. Um, I love propagating from cuttings. It’s honestly the best way to go. If you’re going to propagate your succulents, you know, pretty seriously, actually try to get a stock going. We have a bunch of succulent leaves too. Um, that I’m sure you saw me collect. Um, I’m going to propagate those as well. You can just lay them in a bed of dirt. Honestly, you could just put them on a terracotta tray or you know, a frisbee or on the table or whatever, and they’ll start growing roots and little rosettes. Um, they’ll do just fine too. A lot of people think that you should propagate from leaves, and that’s your best bet, but honestly, it’s cuttings. You guy’s hands down its cuttings because these little guys right here have so many nutrients in them in comparison to a leaf and they are going to be able to kick out roots so much quicker quicker. They don’t have to worry about growing leaves until they have an established root system, Whereas these guys kind of have to figure out how to you know, make both right away and then with your left overs so especially you always want to try to leave leaves on the bottom so that they continue to do the photosynthesis. Um, but these guys already have an established root system and leaves. They’re an entire plant unit. Now they’re just going to keep growing and really, you’ve done nothing to harm them and they’ll keep growing new little heads and offsets. And then you can take those off and make more. So you know, if you really want to up how many succulents you have in your collection, just start cutting. Um, cutting them. Honestly, and you will have more than you know what to do with. That’s kind of the situation where I’m at right now. Uh, but I hope that you guys enjoyed this video. I think I ended up with. Oh, I don’t even know one. Two three, 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Little babies or whole succulents? Really, I mean, this one’s massive. It’s already at least an inch and a half succulent. Um, so, you know, we really do have whole succulents here. And this is how they sell them in most stores. So you know you guys can do a lot with these. These are also perfect for arrangements. Now you can really tuck them into wherever, and they’ll just grow roots. And you guys, honestly I. If I gave you any advice? Just stick these in some soil in about a week and don’t water them for about a month and or until you start to really see them. Look wrinkly because that will be your indicator that they have pushed out roots, and you can even tug on them just gently and see if the soil is attached to something there like the roots, um, and they’ll do amazingly, they’re so much easier, whereas half the time the leaves just die, So I never trust my leaves, but again they do make babies sometimes, so I’m obviously going to keep them don’t. Throw them away! You might get some great succulents out of them, but cuttings are definitely the way to go so. I hope you guys enjoyed this Echeveria Lola harvest. And if you have any questions about taking cuttings or, um, you know, fixing your atoleated succulents, because right now, honestly, these are just going to go exactly back to where they were under the grow. Lights I’ve fixed. How much light they’re getting so they should be happier now and they will grow, You know, beautiful, close and tight rosettes, and that’s what you’re really trying to go for. So if you have any questions on how to fix itiliated succulents or what to do with them, or if you think you might have let them get too thin, you know, always just throw them more under more light, but if you have any of those types of comments or questions, leave them down in the comment section below and I will try to get to those. Um, and if you want, you know, updates and want to see more fun tips like this. Go ahead and give this video a big thumbs up. So I know that you enjoyed it and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel before you leave. I will see you guys in the next video bye.